Deathmask and Aphrodite's expressions shifted abruptly, as if facing a formidable enemy.
Neither of them was in top condition, and they could clearly feel the power of Master Dohko's massive Cosmo.
"Now, I shall show you the true strength of the Libra Saint who survived the previous Holy War!" As the words fell, Dohko's body underwent an incredible transformation!
That layer of shriveled, wrinkled 'elderly skin'—resembling a purple eggshell—began to crack inch by inch! The fissures spread like a spiderweb!
Like a cracking egg... the description was too perfect!
It's starting! It's starting! A true clothes-bursting... no, skin-bursting makeover?! These special effects... badass! Hiroki felt his adrenaline surge slightly as his exhausted body was stimulated by this shocking scene.
As the outer skin split open, Dohko's body grew larger step by step.
Fragments of withered skin fell away like dry leaves! Beneath that peeling shell was not skeletal remains, but firm, full, young muscles brimming with explosive power! The hunched back straightened like a sword, sagging flesh was replaced by strong lines, and wrinkles were covered by smooth skin! A tall, young, and heroic warrior was emerging from that decaying husk like a butterfly from a cocoon!
"How is this possible? This Cosmo full of vitality!!!" Saga cried out, his voice filled with disbelief.
"What's going on? Who is that? Master Dohko turned into a young man?" Little Di couldn't help but scream, perfectly fulfilling his role as the 'hype man' commentator.
Finally, Dohko completely transformed into a young man!
The purple skin fragments vanished entirely, and a Gold Saint with a vigorous physique, resolute face, and majestic aura stood tall and proud!
That full Cosmo was like a blazing furnace, scorching the surrounding space, worlds apart from the decaying 'Purple Sweet Potato' old man from before! The Libra Gold Cloth fit his young body perfectly, erupting with a dazzling radiance!
"What? Are you surprised?" Young Dohko's voice was powerful and resonant, his gaze like lightning piercing straight at Saga! His confidence and strength were on full display.
"How is this possible? How can you have regained your youth!!!" Saga's voice carried a hint of imperceptible wavering.
"Heh, this isn't regaining youth; this is the Misopethamenos of the gods!" Dohko's voice boomed like a great bell.
"What?" Saga's face turned ashen.
"This was personally bestowed upon me by the previous Athena, solely to allow me to maintain my peak combat power from my youth. Unfortunately, the Hades Army hasn't appeared yet, and it's being wasted on you!" Dohko's tone held regret, but even more so, it was the anger of seeing Saga refuse to see reason.
"Misopethamenos?" Saga's brow furrowed.
"Correct. After the technique was cast, I sat in meditation at the Five Old Peaks, where my heart only beats 100,000 times a year," Dohko explained the principle of this god-defying skill.
"100,000 times? Isn't that about the same as a normal person's heartbeats in a single day? Then after more than 200 years, isn't it the equivalent of only 200-plus days passing for you?" Little Di marveled again, very dedicated to his role as hype man.
"Yes! So, I still look as I did when I was eighteen! The aged appearance was merely a disguise. This is a secret that even Pope Shion didn't know!" Dohko's final sentence struck Saga's heart like a heavy hammer!
It turned out that even after usurping the Pope's throne through regicide, he hadn't managed to glimpse even a fraction of one of the Sanctuary's greatest trump cards!
Holy crap! Badass! Hardcore power-up! Misopethamenos is great! 100,000 heartbeats a year?! This setting... is god-tier! No wonder he's a 200-year-old 'young man'!
The Goddess hid it deep! Even Shion didn't know?! This wave... the Pope's coffin lid won't be able to stay down!
He just played the 'pretending to be a weakling' act and got beaten up for it?
This reversal... is exhilarating!
Hiroki looked at Dohko, who had instantly transformed from an old, weak, and disabled man into a peak God of War, then looked at the three-man group of Saga whose faces were extremely ugly. He suddenly felt that his path of 'lying down' and going back seemed to have a new variable?
...Maybe there's no need to be in such a hurry to run away?
"Hahaha, interesting, truly interesting. To think the Goddess still had such a trick up her sleeve! However, it doesn't matter. I will prove that only I can guide humanity, that I am the strongest!" Saga's shock quickly turned into a more fanatical fighting spirit. His dark Cosmo burned fiercely, clearly intending to meet force with force!
"Stubborn fool!" Dohko let out a thunderous shout, and his Cosmo soared into the sky! The Libra Cloth shone with ten thousand rays of light!
Immediately, the great battle began!
Golden light and dark red flows collided violently! The shockwaves swept across the ruined battlefield once more! Sand and stones flew, and energy roared!
Fight!!! Fight!!!
The magnificent battlefield was suddenly torn apart from its dead silence, as if a ten-thousand-ton boulder had been thrown into a calm lake. The young Dohko, clad in the Libra Gold Cloth, exploded with a Cosmo as fierce as a supernova!
The once withered and small husk seemed to experience a reversal of time, replaced by knotted muscles and a surging power that overflowed with life. The gold cloth, shining with golden light, fit his robust and high-spirited figure perfectly, emitting an ancient and majestic, terrifying aura.
The huge broken rocks of the cliff actually levitated and trembled at his feet due to the invisible pressure of his Cosmo, and in an instant, they were crushed into dust-like powder!
"A mere technique of false death... how dare you try to block divine punishment!" The thick, ink-like dark light in Saga's eyes surged violently. Facing his former comrade in his complete form, what he felt was not wavering, but an even more fanatical will to destroy.
He threw his arms open wide; his movements were no longer a display of skill, but a declaration of divine punishment! A terrifying pressure, seemingly from the dawn of the universe, suddenly descended, swallowing the world in all directions, causing space itself to distort and groan.
Countless brilliant star phantoms rapidly condensed and rotated behind him. A massive galactic vortex collapsed and converged at the center of his clenched fist at a speed visible to the naked eye, condensing into a point of light capable of tearing through stars: "Galaxian Explosion—!!!" In an instant, a destructive torrent capable of overturning continental plates and evaporating oceans roared out, carrying the absolute power to crush the rules of all things, rushing forth like a roaring cosmic deluge! The light illuminated everything for dozens of miles around, as if doomsday had arrived!
However, Dohko, facing this world-ending torrent, merely took a majestic half-step forward! The true essence of martial arts, accumulated over two hundred years, was not decayed, but at this moment transformed into a supreme Fist Qi that returned to simplicity.
The dragon veins beneath his feet throbbed violently in response to their master's will. The scale patterns on his armor, symbolizing dragon power, lit up inch by inch, as if a hundred dragons were awakening! Suddenly, the shadows of a hundred dragons soared into the sky from the fissures in the earth that had split open beneath his feet!
Each divine dragon was composed of massive cosmic energy condensed into substance. Their dragon bodies meandered like mountain ranges, and their scales shone like the scorching sun! The deafening roars of the dragons layered upon each other, actually shaking the trajectories of the stars, as if they were going to shatter the entire sky into dust!
"Lushan Hundred Dragon Hegemony!!!"
The ultimate collision of dragon souls and stars!
Two terrifying energies, enough to shake the foundations of the world, crashed into each other at the center of the ruins of Mount Kido of Senjin! At the moment of impact, space itself emitted a tooth-aching, sharp cracking sound, as if a glass mirror was being forcibly crushed!
A visible, thick, liquid-like shockwave, carrying fragments of laws that annihilated all things, exploded outward in a ring at a violent speed exceeding the speed of sound! The ground within a thousand meters was like a fragile sponge cake, lifted up entirely by the massive force, shattered, and then thrown high into the air!
"Cough!"
"Ugh, ah!"
Deathmask and Aphrodite, watching from close range, bore the brunt of it! Even with the protection of their gold cloths, the two were still hit as if by a heavy hammer and were violently blown away. Their cloths emitted blinding sparks under the impact of the flying law fragments. They could only barely stabilize themselves, the blood in their chests churning incessantly!
"Go!" In the distance, Hiroki felt an irresistible sense of suffocation rushing at him, his body almost being decomposed! Izumi was quick to react, suddenly grabbing Hiroki and retreating rapidly!
In Hiroki's eyes, the scene of the core area was reflected in horror—countless hundred dragons composed of cosmic energy were frantically tearing at the core of the collapsing star cluster! The dragon bodies were constantly annihilated in the violent explosions and then stubbornly reborn, as if in an endless cycle of the Heavenly Dao!
And Dohko's fist intent, which condensed his lifelong martial path, was like a stabilizing pillar, forcibly pushing back Saga's Galaxian Explosion torrent—which could almost destroy an asteroid belt—inch by inch, surging back toward Saga himself with undiminished momentum!
"Tsk... the old man's peak is stronger than estimated!" Seeing the star explosion being pushed back, fine energy sparks splashed on the surface of Saga's cloth, and the ground beneath his feet cracked inch by inch.
A rare hint of surprise flashed in his eyes, which was immediately replaced by an even more wild and cruel sneer. "But it ends here!" Amidst the laughter, his figure suddenly became blurred, as if being smeared by space itself.
Several dimensional rifts, like pitch-black venomous snakes, appeared simultaneously from all directions around Dohko without warning! Distorted spatial blades, with the whistle of tearing through time and space, were about to shred him into pieces! "Another Dimension—!!"
However, there was not a trace of panic in Dohko's eyes. With a light tap of his toe on the ground (more accurately, on a piece of rubble floating in the void), a supreme technique of shrinking the earth into an inch, merging with heaven and earth, was instantly performed!
His figure no longer relied solely on speed, but shuttled and flashed like a phantom in the gaps between dimensions, leaving trails of spatial ripples and avoiding the fatal strangulation points!
"Trivial tricks!" The steady low shout was like a dragon's roar piercing the ears! At the same time, the weapon case of the Libra Cloth behind Dohko clanged open! A spear entwined with golden dragon patterns seemed to be summoned, bursting out of the case with a chilling aura of judging evil, and was steadily caught by him!
Where the spear tip pointed, the air was pierced, emitting a series of rapid sonic booms! "Libra: Sacred Spear Piercing!!" The dragon-roar-like spear momentum was like a stream of light piercing the sun, accurately stabbing toward the core of one of Saga's dissipating mirror images!
Pfft! The moment the spear tip shattered the image, the spatial mirror exploded like a broken mirror! But Dohko's pupils suddenly contracted—almost at the same time the image shattered, the real Saga had already used the spatial fluctuations of the shattered image to eerily flash to the sky above Dohko's head!
Saga looked down from above, his palms overlapping in the air in front of his chest. Between his palms was not physical power, but a miniature black hole that was deep and seemed capable of swallowing all light and energy! An evil aura that distorted the spirit and collapsed the will suddenly locked onto Dohko's soul!
"Demon Emperor Fist!!!" A spiritual sting, darker than midnight and colder than a venomous snake, ignored spatial distance and physical defense, piercing straight into Dohko's brow and sea of consciousness at the speed of light! This was the forbidden fist that could confuse and distort even the gods!
A critical moment, death approaching! Just as that pervasive spiritual sting was about to pierce into the core of Dohko's will, a fleeting azure light suddenly emerged from the depths of Saga's left pupil, which was filled with violent destruction!
—It was his extremely suppressed good personality letting out a painful roar in the deep rift of his will, making one last full-strength interference! The overbearing trajectory of the Demon Emperor Fist was forcibly shifted by half an inch because of this resistance from the depths of the soul!
"Whoosh—" The smell of golden hair being instantly scorched gray filled the air! That fatal spiritual torrent, enough to brainwash Dohko, narrowly grazed his temple!
The residual spiritual afterwaves left Dohko in a daze for a moment, but the instinct of a martial god and the fighting will to seize that fatal flaw allowed him to make the swiftest counterattack!
Almost at the moment that infinitesimal shift appeared, Dohko forcibly stabilized his mind and delivered a heavy palm strike containing the power to collapse mountains. Ignoring all defense and carrying a hidden force that vibrated space, it landed solidly on Saga's golden chest plate!
"Bang————!!!" A dull explosion, like an ancient bell bursting, erupted in the air! The indestructible surface of the Gemini Gold Cloth actually emitted a heart-wrenching cracking sound under Dohko's mountain-collapsing palm, which condensed two hundred years of power!
A clearly visible palm print indentation appeared on the cloth! Terrifying power surged through his body!
"Pfft!"
Saga let out a muffled groan, a spray of golden divine blood erupting from his mouth, his face filled with disbelief and fury! The two were like two colliding meteors, falling violently toward the cracking earth at an even faster speed amidst the surging energy shockwaves! Dust and rubble soared into the sky like a volcanic eruption!
Saga, whose feet smashed even deeper marks into the pit in the ground, violently wiped away that streak of blinding golden blood from the corner of his mouth. In his eyes, thick darkness and struggling azure flashed and flickered frantically, as if two souls were fighting to the death in the same husk: "Interfering good thoughts...!"
His voice was low and full of rage, as if coming from the nine levels of hell. "Once I have completely slain Athena and reigned over the Sanctuary, I will surely grind this last bit of dregs... completely into nothingness!!"
Before the roar faded and the dust kicked up by the fall had settled, two unquenchable fighting wills had already soared into the sky once more!
—The battle continued! An even more tragic duel erupted in the next instant!
However, Hiroki could no longer see it, because in the afterwaves of the battle just now, he had already fainted.